The Prince was an ingenious young man.
So much I gathered in faint intervals between anguish while
Marc'antonio bound me with rude splints of his own manufacture.
Yet he said little and did his surgery, though not ungently, with a
taciturn frown which I set down to moroseness, having learnt somehow
that the bandits had broken up their camp on the mountain and marched
off, leaving us two alone.
"Did the Princess know of this?" I managed to ask, and I believe this
was my first intelligible question.
Marc'antonio paused before answering. "She knew that you were to be
hurt, but not the manner of it. It was she that brought you the
file, by stealth. Why did you not use it, and escape?"
"She brought me the file?" I knew it already, but found a fierce
satisfaction in the words. "And she--and you--tried to use it upon
my chain here and deliver me: I forced you to that, my friends!
As for using it myself, you heard what I promised her, yesterday,
before her brother came."
"I heard you talk very foolishly; and now you have done worse than
foolishly. I do not understand you at all--no, by the Mother of God,
I do not! You had the whole night for filing at your chain: and it
would have been better for you, and in the end for her.
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